(A/N): Hi lovelies!
When I wrote this chapter, I didn't do it with only entertainment in mind, but also with some mental health aspects that are very dear to me. Through some tips that are mentioned here I hope to be able to support at least one of you even the slightest.
If you want to learn more about things like thinking traps I'd like to recommend you an app that has helped me a lot. It's called "Youper", a so called mental health assistant, and can be found on both Google Play and Play Store. Check it out and tell me what you think! xx
Also, this story is dedicated to none other than the crazy amazing magpiequeen444 who not only inspired the way I wrote a character in this chapter through her great advice and love, but who also is a crazy talented writer! If you haven't already, you most definitely should check out her amazing Ereri stories! 💕
Next update will be in yet another two weeks; Friday the 19:th of March.
See you there!
Eren's POV
Days had passed and Eren had still not explained to him what happened after Levi had left last Monday and why he had ignored his phone call and text that night.
The first few following days he had procrastinated it; he didn't know how to explain it and so he just allowed himself to avoid thinking about it with the excuse that it was fine to lay low for a few days without it seeming too weird.
As Friday approached he knew that he couldn't hold off on it anymore. He was at this point just making it into a bigger thing than it was since Levi had probably noticed how he seemed off in their few exchanged texts, plus he figured that it would be hard to tell him during the weekend because then Armin would be home all day. But then, finally arriving at Friday, Levi had ended up working a few hours overtime and by the time he was finished Armin was already home. And so Eren realized with a dreadful feeling in his stomach that he didn't seem like he would be able to talk to him until possibly Monday since he couldn't do it while Armin was there.
That's the danger of procrastinating, he realized. It might seem fine at first, but then something unexpected happens and in no time you're late and panicking. Eren cursed at his own stupidity and became more and more anxious, knowing that it looked so much worse now that he had been hiding it for a week all while kind of avoiding Levi and acting weird.
Finally it was Monday morning when his phone suddenly rang. He jumped from the sudden sound and turned over in his bed to pick up his phone. It was Levi... but oddly enough, he wasn't calling from his number but through the dating app they had first met on. What the hell? he wondered and felt his heart beat as he answered the call.
"Hello?"
"Hi sweet peas! Is this Eren?" a very unexpected female voice chirped in his ear.
"...Yeah?" he asked, stunned. Who was this? What was happening?
"Oh wonderful! My, you sound just like I imagined!"
"Who's... Wait-" he stopped in his tracks when the realization hit him. "Hange Zoe?" he asked, eyes wide and a smile starting to spread across his features.
"Que? You even know my full name!" Hange exclaimed.
"Oh my god, the queen herself! And yeah of course, how can I not know the name of my brilliant match maker?" Eren grinned.
God knows that he loved this woman. They hadn't actually spoken to each other at all since that very first day when Eren had discovered the all too honest profile that she had created for the unknowing Levi, but damn had he fallen for her humor and fun attitude. And over the course of his and Levi's relationship he had only kept liking her more and more thanks to the many stories Levi would tell him that featured the eccentric woman. He was sure that she was one of the few true but very positive friendships Levi had and she was just such a cool, free-spirited person. He smiled out into the empty air, feeling as if he met an old friend.
"See now that's some proper gratefulness! Levi isn't treating me with the respect this number one match maker deserves at all!" she complained with a laugh. "You have to kick his cute butt for me Eren. I mean, you could totally get away with it".
"Oh my god" Eren laughed. Hange was probably the only one to ever call any of Levi's body parts cute. "Sure thing, madam savior" he said and jokingly saluted, as if she saw him.
"So... I might be barging in, I tend to do that a lot, or so I've heard. But you see, I've noticed that something serious is going on with Levi and he won't tell me anything, so now I'm hijacking his profile again to see if I can be of any unwelcome help" she said with an audible smile in her voice, but he could also sense the seriousness under her relaxed tone.
"Oh god... he has no idea you're contacting me, has he?" Eren asked feeling half amused, half nervous.
"Of course not. But thankfully our tech clueless cutie haven't thought about changing the password I gave him" she said proudly.
"Hah! This is mental!" Eren laughed. "Wow, it's really great to speak with you finally. And thank you for reaching out, honestly... Is he not doing well?" he asked, his voice gradually getting more serious and finally breaking a little as worry started to show. Hange sighed.
"See Levi's a huge grump, especially so when something is up with you" she started. "But ever since he came back from your recent road trip he's been, hmm... distant, rather than grumpy. I've known Levi for a long, long time and I've seen him shut himself in before, but this is the first time in a few years. So, do you know what's up?" she asked. Eren bit his lip and sat down on Armin's bed.
"Shit... It might be my fault" he said, his voice weak. "We haven't really talked the last few days".
"Have something happened between you two?"
"No... not really. Fuck, I've just been stupid and emotional" he said, cursing himself.
"That's okay, love. Tell me about it".
To his own surprise, Eren started to actually spill out just about everything that had haunted his mind lately to the older woman. There was just something about her that made him want to confide in her, plus he found that it was much easier to talk about his problems with someone outside of his own circle.
He told her about his confused emotions after Levi had left and about what then had happened with him going to the bar and getting drunk on his own. He told her about his insecurities with his own messy personality, feeling ashamed and fearing that he was too immature and a bother to the older man. He told her about his worries about the long distance between them and how they would be able to make it work in the long run and even how all of these worries and feelings overall just made him feel weak and pathetic.
Hange listened for a long time to him without interrupting. Maybe she sensed that this was the first time that Eren really spilled out all of these worries to someone and that he needed to just get it all out at once without stopping. When he finally was done, he fell quiet, feeling drained and a bit odd, but also very relieved.
"Oh hun... You need a serious dose of self-compassion" Hange said with determination.
"Self- what?"
"Self-compassion. You're judging and being hard on yourself when all of these emotions you're feeling are completely natural" she explained. "You're human Eren. Treat yourself as such. It's okay to not be okay you know, don't go around feeling weak for having emotions and worries. I assure you that even Levi has them too, and there's no way that he would be mad at you for this. In fact, if I know the geezer correctly, he'll be a bit too happy about hearing about how much he's affecting you".
"...But it's fucking embarrassing" Eren said quietly.
"No, being vulnerable is definitely hard, but not embarrassing. Only the strongest men are vulnerable Eren" Hange said, her voice firm as if she was scolding him. Eren thought of her words for a moment and knew that he actually agreed with that statement... it was just hard to apply it on himself. "I can also tell that you're drowning in negative thinking traps" she added.
"Huh?"
"So, thinking traps are sort of cognitive mistakes that people tend to do while affected by negative emotions or viewpoints, they trick the mind to view a situation unfairly" she explained. "For example here you're falling into what's called fortune telling and mind reading. You're assuming things about what Levi would think, babe, without actually knowing. And then feeling and acting accordingly as if it was a truth. Did you know that research says that about 90 percent of what people worry about never actually happen?"
"...No I didn't know that" Eren said, contemplating this for a moment. That was quite a powerful fact to think about... To think that people are feeling all this worry and anxiety without reason, how wasteful of so much of your well-being, he thought.
"And you're also applying negative memory and perfectionism onto yourself. You feel frustrated and worried about making mistakes and not being perfect, despite the fact that that's just an impossible standard. And currently you also only seem to remember and count the bad things about you, ignoring all the good things; 'negative memory'. Most people have a criticizing voice in their head that makes them judge themselves harder than they would judge others. We shouldn't do that, so we all need a good dose of self-compassion".
"I see..." Eren said, feeling a little stunned.
"No one can avoid negative feelings in life, if it was that easy and you indeed could just 'get over it', no one would have any negative feelings, would they?" she pointed out. "Struggling against emotions can actually increase them and if you try but fail to control your emotions, it will just make you feel guilty or like a failure".
"Fuck..." Eren cursed, feeling a little embarrassed at how well she seemed to understand his issues and also shocked at how true and simple these truths seemed now that she spelled them out.
"You need to understand that painful feelings are natural and healthy reactions to life's ups and downs and actually embrace them. So dare to acknowledge and analyze them, preferably not just on your own, because if you do you will learn to understand them and yourself better until they lose more and more of the control over you and your way of thinking" she finished and Eren didn't quite know what to say, so it went quiet for a short moment. "Oops, sorry love, I got ahead of myself again, didn't I?"
"No, not at all..." Eren said. "I'm not sure if I understand everything yet, but I feel that you're correct".
"Wonderful!" she chirped. "See you have a lot of potential Eren with your honest attitude and your taste for life" she said proudly, "I feel that you will sooner or later become a master empath".
"Wow, I don't know about that" he laughed. "But this is pretty cool, I usually don't talk about my feelings at all".
"Oh love, then I'm certainly honored!"
"Heh, you should be" Eren smiled. "Gosh, I've been so off these last days... I wouldn't even have recognized myself. But it's probably a side effect of how fast our relationship have progressed, I think" he pondered.
"Oh?"
"Yeah... probably isn't my place to tell you this, but we... eh, crossed the L-word border last weekend" he said and felt a small heat creep up over his cheeks.
"...Oh" she said again, this time with emphasis. "Wait, did he say it back...?"
"Uh... he initiated it" Eren said, scratching the back of his head in a happy but embarrassed manner.
"...Oooh!" she said, sounding a bit shocked before falling quiet for a moment. "Well that explains it".
"What?" Eren asked, feeling a bit confused and nervous from her reaction.
"I can't tell you much, because I honestly don't know much. But Levi has a very complicated relationship with love. And if he's the one to even initiate it, then that's huge Eren".
"Huge in a good or a bad way?" he asked while kind of holding his breath.
"In a most amazing way! But it also explains why he's freaking out now".
"...He's freaking out?"
"Well not in the way that you or I would freak out, but in his own kind of way. Shutting off instead of just being pissed at everything and everyone".
"Oh god" Eren said, his heart doing some funny jumps, both out of worry and guilt over not having really thought about how he might possibly feel these last few days, and also over the selfish joy of knowing that Levi was this affected by him.
"That guy has lost so much and so many people Eren, that in a way, he's probably terrified of love" she said. "You need to reach out to him, hun".
"Shit... yeah, god yeah".
"But don't worry honeybun, Levi don't do things he would regret so if he has let you come this close you can be sure of that he feels really confident about you and your relationship. And he's mad strong, just talk to him and I'm sure things will go smoothly" she said happily.
"...Okay. I'll call him" Eren said, feeling butterflies flood his insides.
"Good boy" she said proudly at which Eren couldn't help but to laugh.
"You and Levi have some similar expressions. Did you learn from him or did he learn from you?" he asked, smirking.
"Guess" she said with a playful tone and Eren chuckled.
"Hey, can I consult my match maker again if I need it?"
"Anytime, cutie!" she said and they went on to exchange numbers so that she wouldn't need to hijack Levi's dating app profile next time.
"Oh but don't mention me, yet at least... that man gets crazy jealous you know" she chirped.
"Right" Eren laughed, and soon after they ended the call.
Wow... what a character. Two things he had learned: One, Hange Zoe was crazy intelligent and honestly a whole fucking beast, and two, he needed to call Levi right now.
Levi's POV
"-I was just so fucking emotional and didn't know what to do... I'm really sorry, Levi" Eren finished, his voice full of regret and some shame. Levi had been mid-work when he to his pleasant surprise saw that Eren was finally calling, but he certainly hadn't expected this sudden, long and straight-forward confession from him.
"Eren... Slow down, I'm not mad at you" he said.
"You're not?" Eren asked quietly.
"No. I'm just happy you came to me about all this" he said genuinely.
"Yeah, finally..." he said with a sarcastic tone as if he cursed himself for taking so long.
"Hey, it's not an easy thing to be in our kind of relationship, it quickly gets emotionally intense. So don't beat yourself up over your feelings Eren" he said, eyebrows furrowed from the frustration of not being able to be there with him. He felt responsible for this. Eren was young, emotional and had for the first time both fallen in love and submitted himself to someone. He really needed to take care of his emotional state. "...And actually, I should be the one to apologize".
"Why?" Eren asked, sounding surprised.
"I should've reached out to you more these past few days and made sure that you knew that you could come to me with everything. I could tell that something wasn't right from your texts".
"...Did you think about it?"
"Oh yeah, I thought about it" Levi said grimly with emphasis, "but I was nervous... worried that it would be even worse than what it was, as well as nervous about myself".
"What do you mean?" Eren said and Levi let out a sigh. It wasn't too easy to admit to these weak sides of him, but communication was key, so there was no way of avoiding it.
"I thought that you might not want to talk about it and I was afraid that if I tried to reach out but felt that you shut me out again, I might act in ways I would regret" he said grimly.
"...Are you talking about your possessiveness again?" Eren asked, seemingly carefully.
"Yeah" he grunted.
"...Wow".
"What?"
"Ah, no... It's just kinda cool to see that not even you are perfect" Eren said sheepishly, but his tone now considerably more light than in the beginning.
"Hah, glad too see that at least someone can enjoy themselves" Levi smirked.
"Sorry sorry" Eren giggled. "But speaking on the matter..." Eren started saying but hesitated for a moment before continuing, "I was serious when I said I liked it".
"Eren" Levi said, once again in a warning tone. He couldn't let him drag him into this dangerous play. This brat didn't know what he was getting into.
"You know... A very clever person once told me that if you... uh, try to work against your emotions they tend to just to get worse" he said slowly, seemingly recalling someone's words. "Instead you should accept that your emotions will always be there so that you work as best as you can with them instead of fighting them... That way you'll understand and control them better" he finished, sounding proud.
"Hmm" Levi said skeptically.
"I understand that you're serious about this Levi and I'm not suggesting that we should just let it all free, but don't you think it would be better if we at least gave room for them?" he asked. "I want to get to know all of you, the good and the bad... And I don't think you need to be so careful here, instead I actually think we can work pretty damn well with this" he said, his voice now starting to sound a little breathless, both as if he was holding his breath knowing that he was in dangerous territory, but also as if he was in anticipation. Levi felt himself helplessly respond to Eren's tone... He cursed inside his head and shut his eyes to keep his focus. He needed to think about this for a second.
"...First off, what the hell has flown into you? You've talked more about emotions to me now in the last thirty minutes than you have before in all of our time together".
"Eh, well... Let's say I have a fairy godmother?" he said.
"What?"
"Whatever, just look at it as help from the divine" he laughed. Levi furrowed his brows.
"...I'm gonna have to hear more about that some time" he warned him, "but for now... fine, let's have it your way. Let's try it out" he said and felt his body tingle as he finally let his thoughts start to roam more freely. "Fuck... You know that I'm going to claim you so fucking bad, right Eren?"
"God... Yeah. I get goosebumps just thinking about it" Eren breathed, his tone now quickly dropping in pitch.
"You're coming here on Friday, remember? I've emailed you your plane ticket".
"I can't wait-" he said and hesitated just a second, "master".
Fuck. All hail fairy godmother.